The Impact of Arabic and English Language Educational Games on Students’ Emotional States

Background

Evoking students’ emotions while they play educational games is one way to enhance their learning motivation. Positive emotions such as joy and surprise can increase learning motivation. On the other hand, negative emotions such as sadness, anger, and disgust can reduce learning motivation. Emotions drive learning motivation, and motivation promotes learning.

Aim

This study compared educational games in two languages (Arabic and English), testing the impact of different languages on students’ emotions in order to particularly understand the effect of the Arabic language on their emotions.

Method

The two main methods used to achieve the research objectives include exploratory and experimental approaches. The exploratory study consists of a systematic literature review (SLR) on affective computing in educational games. In the experimental study, 30 Arabic-speaking students (Male n = 13, Female n = 17) were recruited to play one game with different language versions; their facial expressions were recorded and assessed continuously.

Results

The analysis of exploratory data revealed that no previous study had investigated the effect of different languages on a person’s emotions, specifically in the context of educational games. The main finding was that significantly higher degrees of expression is associated with negative emotions (anger [p < 0.05], contempt [p < 0.05], and sadness [p < 0.05]) while playing the Arabic educational game, indicating that participants felt more negative towards the Arabic language game.

Conclusion

This study found negative emotions related to Arabic educational games, which may explain why these games are not very attractive or successful at times. These findings suggest that the method used in the present study might be helpful as a part of the evaluation of Arabic educational games.